Yes, You Should Buy a Robotic Vacuum

In terms of cheaply buying back some of your time, looking at everyday household chores will provide some of the lowest hanging fruit. If you add up the time over the years that you have spent doing chores around the house that take essentially no brain power and yet suck up your time, you would likely be astonished!

Vacuuming. An easy target for elimination.

If you're like the typical household, you probably spend around half an hour to an hour each week vacuuming. Some spend more (those of you who absolutely love those vacuum lines or are slightly obsessive) and some less (those with a higher tolerance for dirt, me). But let's assume 30 minutes per week to be on the low end, which is 26 hours per year spent vacuuming! Now, unless you really love the art of vacuuming, I'd imagine you could find much better, or at least more enjoyable, ways to spend your time.

The Cost. Money and Time.

Depending on what your hourly wage is, this could be eating up a tremendous amount of money that could otherwise be earned. Just multiply those 26 hours by your hourly wage to see what you are missing. This could be very significant with even a moderate hourly wage.

Money aside, your time in not renewable and those 26 hours could be much better spent with family, friends, hiking, fishing, flying model airplanes, or whatever you fancy.

Optimize.

A couple of years ago, while listening to a podcast, I heard a guest mention that his number one life hack was his robotic vacuum. It didn't take long for me to jump on Amazon and locate this moderately priced robotic vacuum with over 4,000 reviews at an average of 4 stars. Since I value both my time and my wife's time very highly (much higher than our hourly wages), the $200 investment was a no-brainer for me. I even slapped on the additional $20 for the 3-year warranty so we could basically run it constantly, knowing that if it breaks down, it will be replaced. We have not looked back since. This little robot feels like a member of our household and our one-year-old boy loves turning it on each morning. Both our hardwoods and carpets stay consistently cleaner than every before with absolutely no effort on our part.

These little vacuums really do a pretty tremendous job and can be programmed to work while you're gone and will automatically go and dock themselves when their battery is low. We now usually only use our regular vacuum once per month or even less to get some areas that "Deebot", as our little friend is affectionately known, does not get too well (of which there aren't many).

I look at it like this. I paid $220 to eliminate at least 78 hours of vacuuming for three years (it actually would take us longer than the 30 minutes of vacuuming per week, which makes this even better, more like saving 125-150 hours). And really, who am I kidding, it is my wife who is the one that always makes sure our place doesn't end up looking like a bachelor pad, doing most of the vacuuming. It has been wonderful to see a tangible stresser taken out of her life, while at the same time seeing real time added back.

This is often the first thing, silly as it may be, that I respond to people with when they say they are too busy. I say, "Do you have a robotic vacuum?" They say, "No." I say, "Why not?"